Arancini

I originally posted this back in 2011 ... but I made it again today and thought it was worth revisiting!

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Last year at Rory's company Christmas party, I chose arancini for my meal. I chose it because it was a food I had never heard of and I love trying new stuff that sounds yum. I am so glad I did! I loved it, but I haven't had it since. Well, the other night we made risotto. A delicious mushroom risotto that I will totally make again. It is on page 66 of Jamie's 30 Minute Meals cookbook. I highly recommend trying it. Make the whole meal! The salad was so yum (you can see the few leftovers in the photo below) and the dessert .... well, there weren't any leftovers of that!!

We had some leftovers of the risotto so I decided to try my hand at arancini. It was so stinkin' easy ! Here's how you can do it too ...

leftover risotto, I had enough to make 10 golf ball size arancini
flour
egg, beaten
panko breadcrumbs

Roll the risotto into a little bit bigger than golf ball size balls. Then coat with flour, egg and panko. (here's a little video if you want to see it done ... I watched this and decided to use the spoon like she did in the egg ... it was a good tip !)

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan to medium-ish heat (adjust heat as needed) and fry arancini until golden. I turned them onto every side ... they were actually a little more square than round by the time I finished ! haha

I served with leftover salad (it was a spinach/pine nut/sun dried tomato/cucumber with a lemon balsamic dressing salad) and I sprinkled grated romano cheese over the salad and the arancini.

Sooooooo goooooood !!

PS ... you can use ANY risotto you like.

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Below: Original photo as posted in 2011.

Rory's Rustic Ham Bone Soup

So, we had an amazing ham for Christmas dinner (I'll post that recipe later !) Rory wanted to do something with the ham bone so he searched on line, found a basic recipe and modified it ... Here is what he made. We loved it !

Ham Bone ... with about 1 cup of ham chunks that aren't good for sandwiches
½ pound (250g) dried red lentils
6 cups water
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 carrots, chopped
5 cloves garlic, a couple minced and a couple roughly chopped
1 red chili, diced
1 (420g) can of tomato puree
¼ cup canola oil
handful of roughly chopped fresh basil and parsley leaves
1 tsp garam masala
salt and pepper to taste

Rinse lentils thoroughly. Combine ingredients and bring to a boil. Then cover and simmer for 2 hours. Remove bone from soup. Pull ham off of bone and gather up big chunks that have fallen off ... chop it up and return to soup. Discard the bone.

That's it. Dead easy. You could also do it in the crock pot ... 8 to 10 hours on low.

We served it with buttered sour dough bread and Rory sprinkled a few chili flakes on top of his ...

Mexican Chicken Quesadillas

These were so simple.
I just spread a whole (not cut up) whole (not white) wheat flour tortilla with
leftover Crock Pot Mexican Chicken, avocado, rice and mozarella cheese.
Top with another whole whole wheat flour tortilla.
Toast in sandwich press.
DONE !!

40 Clove Garlic Chicken Pizza

We had leftover 40 clove chicken the other night and I decided to try a little experiment. Seriously ... I think that's pretty much all I do these days ... experiment ! I wanted to try and change up the dough a bit. Last time I made it, I found it a bit hard to roll out and I had read that adding a small amount of gluten flour will help with elasticity. So ... I made my dough like this ....

1 and 1/3 cup water
2 TBLS honey
2 TBLS olive oil
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups whole wheat spelt flour
1 TBLS gluten flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 and 1/4 tsp yeast

This dough was really nice. It is much wetter and required more flour on the surface to roll but the taste was great ! I think I'll try adding half as much gluten flour next time and see what that does. I'll tweak it til it's perfect !! :)

Here's the pizza before we put the mozzarella on top ...

The toppings went like this :

Tomato Sauce:
2 TBLS tomato paste
1 TBLS thickened cream
Leftover garlic and onions from the 40 clove garlic chicken

Mix and spread on dough.

The Rest of It:
One small potato, unpeeled, uncooked and thinly sliced
Leftover 40 clove garlic chicken, maybe we used about 1/2 a cup ? Do it to your liking.
A handful of fresh baby spinach leaves
A dozen or so kalamata style olives
Three homemade sun dried tomatoes, defrosted earlier and cut into chunks
Red onion, sliced
Spring onion, chopped
Camembert cheese, slivered

And then top with mozarella cheese. Bake in oven 15/20 minutes on 400F/200C.

ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS !!

Meat Pie and Taters

So ... this was linked up in one of my old menu plans but it was on an old blog
of mine that is private and no longer used. Andrea stumbled upon it and wanted the
recipe so I'm cutting and pasting it to here !!

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This is another leftovers/use up what I have recipe.


A while back I made a pot roast in the crock pot.

It was ok but not something we wanted to eat for leftovers so I froze it.

It's a super easy recipe.

You just chop up some carrots, potatoes and onions.

Add them to the crockpot along with a big hunk of beef.

Mix a can of cream of mushroom soup with a package of french onion soup mix.

Pour the soup on top of the meat/veggies. High for 8 hours.


So, tonight, I used the thawed leftovers.

Added some mushrooms and instant gravy.

Poured that into pie tins lined with puff pastry.

Topped with pasty.

Baked in oven ~400F, 200C ~ for about 40 minutes.

It was delicious !

OR

you could try this beef and guinness pie recipe that is delicious as well !


I served it with these potatoes that I found through super cook !!

I changed them a bit so I'll tell you how I did them.

I boiled the potatoes for about 15/20 minutes.

Skin on. But that's my personal laziness preference.

Drain. Cool. Chop.

Add a finely diced onion, big handful of chopped fresh parsley, 1 tbls (?) chopped fresh rosemary, salt and pepper to the a frying pan with hot olive oil in it. Add the potatoes first. Fry til they are your desired crispiness.

What to do ...

...with all that left over Jambalaya !?
~
Put it in a flour tortilla, cover with baby spinach leaves & mozarella cheese.

Pop it in the sandwich press for a few minutes - 'til toasted.
Top with chopped avocado, black olives and sour cream.

Of course !